The aid derived from the State may be classed under three heads. them and the amounts appropriated under them— 1. Appropriation for current expenses. 2. Appropriation for building (mainly).. 3. Income from endowment granted by State. Total.. To name $1,257,048 811,566 149,486 2,218, 100 But these appropriations are in some cases for instruction in subjects not named in the act of August 30, 1890, among the subjects calculated to directly benefit agriculture and the mechanic arts. It is therefore requisite to ascertain how much was actually spent by these universities and colleges for instruction in the subjects specified in the act of 1890. Such an amended statement will take the following form: Amount received from State for current expenses for all departments.. Income received from fees and other sources.. Income received from Federal grant of 1890. $1,257, 048 811,566 149, 486 1,508,869 617,506 924, 758 5,269,233 Total, excluding schools for colored race except in Maryland. Disbursements for instruction and facilities for instruction specified in act of 1890.... 2,486, 251 Total expended for other than subjects specified in act of 1890.. 2,782,982 But the figures of the above statement require still further consideration. The gross sum of the item " Amount received from State for current expenses" is very largely contributed to by the total grants to several State universities (Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska, and California) and the State College of Pennsylvania. The appropriations to these seven institutions, in which the technical work is done in colleges of the university, amount to $800.000, or 64 per cent of the grand total received from the States by the fifty institutions for the Caucasian race within the Union. Again, the amount of the item "Income from fees and other sources" looks very large, but its importance is reduced when it is shown how unevenly it is distributed among the fifty institutions, for one-half of the amount, that is to say, $759,000, is contributed by Cornell University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Let us exclude the Massachusetts Institute and include in the computation the universities of Cornell, Illinois, Wisconsin, and California. Even then it is found that 50 per cent of the sum total received by the aforementioned fifty institutions from "fees and other sources" is paid into the treasury of four universities, all founded upon Mr. Cornell's idea of a university-where anyone can come and learn anything. Leaving now the matter of State aid, the subject of the annual national aid may be in turn examined. Other than the grant of two townships to provide for a university, and the grant of 500,000 acres for internal improvement (act of 1841), the grants made by the Federal Government have been a grant per capita or by actual extent of territory (sixteenth and thirty-sixth sections in each township for school purposes). Thus the surplus revenue deposit of 1836 was distributed according to representation in Congress, as also the grant of land given by the act of 1862. But by the act of 1890 Congress placed all States upon the same footing by granting to each an equal amount. The way in which the institutions have distributed the amount in expending it is given in the following statement: a This includes in the case of Connecticut and of Rhode Island the payments of three years. It is quite certain that much which is reported to this Bureau as expended for "natural science" may be included as instruction in agriculture. Horticulture, however indefinite the term may be, ranging from "market gardening" to orchard growing, is, it would seem, more nearly related to agriculture than it is to natural or physical science. The same may be said of veterinary science, and even, perhaps, of agricultural chemistry; yet these applications of the sciences in the "garden or orchard," in "animal pathology," and in agriculture are frequently returned as natural or physical sciences. This distribution of one university is interesting from the emphatic way it reports under agriculture, to wit: NOTE.-The State, through special appropriations to the college of agriculture, provides funds which cover the cost for all apparatus, machinery, and stock and material purchased for use in said college. This university under the head of natural science gives one item, namely, physics, throwing back civil ["RR"], electrical, mechanical, and experimental engineering to the general head of the applied science called mechanic arts. It is thought that the variation of the reports in classifying the subjects of instruction is probably due to there being one professor for sciences so nearly related as chemistry, botany, and meteorology are to agriculture. The manner in which the science of construction or the engineering sciences have been classified presents quite as much diversity as the biological sciences, spoken of in the preceding paragraph. Engineering and the scientific generalizations and the applications of mathematics in representing its facts are divided up among three of the five heads given in the form sent to the treasurer of each institution, to wit, natural science, mathematical science, and mechanic arts. One institution will do this in one way; another in quite a different way. To illustrate: INSTITUTION A. [All under mechanic arts.] Mechanical engineering (one professor). Electrical engineering (one professor). Marine engineering (one professor). Experimental engineering (one professor). INSTITUTION B. [Under head of mathematical science.] Mechanics, hydromechanics, bridge building, differential calculus, and integral calculus (one professor). Mechanics, astronomy, and calculus (one professor). Algebra, descriptive geometry, and drafting (one professor). [Under head of physical science.] Physics, elements of mechanism, and electrical science (one professor). The most notable diversity of classification is, as might be expected, in the case of civil engineering, which is about as frequently placed under mathematical science as under mechanic arts. There is some diversity also in the location of drawing. In general, however, it may be said that when one subject is confided to a single professor the arrangement is this, despite the ambiguity of the term mechanic arts: Engineering (whether mechanical, electrical, experimental, or civil), shopwork, and drawing are placed under mechanic arts; mathematics, pure and" applied," under mathematical science, and the general or “ elementary" laws, which matter obeys or the so-called "natural philosophy," under physical science. In order to ascertain what was meant exactly by the terms civil engineering, mechanical engineering, etc., this Bureau, several years ago, made a critical examination of the programmes of the larger technological institutions in Europe and America, the result appearing in volume 2 of the Commissioner's Report for 1889-90, where the matter is discussed at some length. III. FARMERS' INSTITUTES.' The agricultural experiment station, says Prof. John Hamilton, deputy secretary of agriculture and director of farmers' institutes in Pennsylvania, after having endeavored to assist farmers by solving questions of interest to them and then disseminating the solutions among them, found that many farmers, by reason of their lack of scientific training, were unable to understand the full force and application of these results. Thus there was created a necessity for persons familiar with science and its relation to practice to go out into the country districts and explain the meaning of the experiments and their practical value. From this necessity grew the modern farmers' institute. But this institution reaches back further in the history of this country than is commonly supposed and reported. In 1799, Count Fellenberg had established at Hofwyl, in Switzerland, the agricultural school of that name. "The rational agriculture," said this enthusiast, "which will proceed from Hofwyl and will penetrate not only every district of Switzerland but of the whole civilized world, is the instrument for the physical and moral regeneration of mankind.” The first notice published in America of this experiment was by "Professor Griscom, of the New York school," but the account given during 1830-31, in the American Annals of Education, by W. C. Woodbridge, its editor, who had resided at Hofwyl off and on for nine months, is far more interesting. While Fellenberg was building up a love for agriculture in Switzerland, Albrect Thaer, a student of the then flourishing agriculture of England, established his experimental farm at Celle, whence he was called by the King of Prussia to create, in 1804, the "first" higher agricultural institute in existence (höhere Lehranstalt für Landwirthshaft) at Möglin. Thaer, the author of the formerly well-known work on the Principles of Rational Agriculture, stipulated that there should be attached to the school an experimental farm, as nothing in his opinion is so educative in agronomy, considered in a practical sense, as the ability to see processes in operation and to handle the implements of culture. Let it not be supposed, however, that The basis of this section, except the historical part, is the information collected by Prof. John A. Woodward, of the Pennsylvania Experiment Station. The Bureau is indebted to Mr. Oliver D. Schock, chief clerk of the department of agriculture of Pennsylvania, for the documents containing an account of the institute work of that department. * Address before Association of American Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations, November 11, 1896. His idea was expressed by the King of Prussia, William III, when this school was subsequently made a part of the University of Berlin, as follows: There must be connected with the university, as an essential part an institute organized for the purpose of illustration (ein musterhaft eingerichtetes institut), which would exhibit the relation of theory and practice, upon which relation the instructor could base his instruction and in which institute the student might learn. The use of the word institute here will be familiar to those acquainted with the "pathological and chemical institutes" of the German universities, being our Americar laboratories fitted out with a director and a full faculty of instructors." the foregoing statement is intended to make the assertion that Thaer's experi mental farm (perhaps a synopsis of English practice) was anything more than a place for exhibiting proper methods of cultivating the soil. The real scientific experiment station based on organic chemistry made its first appearance during the thirties upon the farm of Brechelbronn, in Alsace, under the direction of Boussingault, and in 1842 at Rothamstead. In Scotland the earliest agricultural association was established in 1723 as the Society of Improvers in the Knowledge of Agriculture in Scotland, but it is said that the tenantry took no interest in it, inasmuch as they are always unwilling to adopt the practices of those who cultivate land for amusement. During the period from 1795 to 1815 it is said that the substantial education of the parish school of Scotland had diffused through all ranks such a measure of intelligence as to enable the Scots to promptly discern and skillfully and energetically take advantage of the spring tide of prosperity produced by the constant wars on the Continent of Europe and further to profit by the agricultural information then plentifully furnished by the Bath and West of England Society (1777), the Highland Society (1784), and the National Board of Agriculture (1793). But to return to America. A national figure at once attracts attention. The earliest proposal for promoting "useful knowledge among the British plantations in America" was made in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin. The society contemplated by this proposal, among other matters, was to aim to improve the breeds of useful animals, the cultivation and the clearing of land, for "all philosophic experiments that let light into the nature of things tend to increase the power of man and multiply the conveniences and pleasures of life." It is only necessary to add that the society for the promotion of knowledge among the people established in 1824 is called the Franklin Institute, to say nothing of the Brooklyn Institute of 1823, the Albany Institute of 1824, the Smithsonian Institution of 1838, and the Cooper Institute of 1852, all of them apparently catching as an ideal expression at the name of the Institut de France, into which were combined by the first French Republic the so-called learned bodies styled academies before the French Revolution.1 In 1824 Stephen Van Rensselaer, of New York, employed a very able gentleman, Prof. Amos Eaton, with a competent number of assistants and sufficient apparatus "to traverse the State on or near the route of the Erie Canal and to deliver in all the principal villages and towns familiar lectures, accompanied by experiments and illustrations in chemistry, natural philosophy, and some or all of the branches of natural history." This scientific and educational journey through the State was made during the summer of 1824 and "aroused a prodigious interest.” It is readily seen that this idea is not new as far as the method is concerned, and it only remains to speak briefly of a possible defect which the method may contain. The higher instruction of France, or, in American phraseology, post-graduate instruction, was at one time given in the form of public lectures. The result of this was very unsatisfactory, not only to those who had the desire to study, but to the professor who desired to instruct. "What could be more humiliating,” says Ernest Renan, in speaking upon this delicate topic, "than for the professor to find himself before an audience made up of idlers and other persons whose time hung heavy on their hands, whom he was compelled to amuse; for his success was comparable to the merit of the Roman actor whose end was attained when it could be said of his performance, 'Saltavit et placuit'-he jumped and he pleased.” There are thirty-two States having farmers' institutes. One-half of these are under the auspices of the agricultural colleges or experiment stations, and the other half under those of the State board or department of agriculture. The latest Those interested in these matters may consult "A preliminary list of American learned and educational societies," prepared by Dr. Stephen B. Weeks and published by this Bureau in its 1893-94 report. form of organizing these institutes is shown in the law passed by Michigan in 1895, which follows: "SECTION 1. The people of the State of Michigan enact. That the State board of agriculture is hereby authorized to hold institutes and to maintain courses of reading and lectures for the instruction of citizens of this State in the various branches of agriculture and kindred sciences. The said board shall formulate such rules and regulations as it shall deem proper to carry on the work contemplated in this act, and may employ an agent or agents to perform such duties in connection therewith as it shall deem best. "SEC. 2. When twenty or more persons, residents of any county in this State, organize themselves into a society to be called the county farmers' institute society for the purpose of teaching better methods of farming, stock raising, fruit culture, and all the branches of business connected with the industry of agriculture, and adopt a constitution and by-laws agreeable to rules and regulations furnished by the State board of agriculture; and when such society shall have elected such proper officers and performed such other acts as may be required by the rules of said board, such society shall be deemed an institute society in the meaning of this act: Provided, That not more than one such institute society in any county shall be authorized by this act: And provided further, That any existing organization, approved by the board of agriculture, shall be considered a legally organized institute society under the terms of this act. "SEC. 3. In each county where an institute society shall be organized under the provisions of this act, the State board of agriculture shall hold one annual institute, two days in length, at such place in the county and at such time as said board may deem expedient, and shall furnish at least two speakers or lecturers, with all expenses paid, to be present at all sessions of the institute. The county institute society shall provide a suitable hall for the institute, furnish fuel and lights and pay other local expenses, and shall provide speakers who shall occupy one-half the time of the institute that is given to set addresses: Provided, That upon the request of any local institute society who desire to conduct their own institute the State board of agriculture may, in their discretion, appropriate from the institute fund, money, not to exceed twenty-five dollars, in lieu of the speakers provided for by this act, said money to be expended by said local institute society entirely in institute work. "SEC. 4. If the funds appropriated by this act will permit, the said board of agriculture may hold a number of four-day institutes, at such places and times as said board may determine, at which the primary object shall be to furnish a school of instruction in practical agriculture and kindred sciences. "SEC. 5. The State board of agriculture shall maintain the course of reading known as the Farm Home Reading Circle, and may expend from the moneys appropriated by this act a sum not to exceed two hundred dollars for each of the two years for which the appropriation is made for the maintenance and extension of said course. "SEC. 6. For the purposes mentioned in the preceding sections the said board of agriculture may use such sum as it shall deem proper, not exceeding the sum of five thousand dollars in the year ending June thirtieth, eighteen hundred ninetysix, five thousand dollars in the year ending June thirtieth, eighteen hundred ninety-seven, and such amounts are hereby appropriated from the general funds of this State, which said sum of five thousand dollars shall for each of the years eighteen hundred ninety-five and eighteen hundred ninety-six be included in the State taxes apportioned by the auditor-general on all the taxable property of the State, to be levied, assessed, and collected as are other State taxes, and when so assessed and collected to be paid into the general fund to reimburse said fund for the appropriations made by this act." ED 9640 |